You
by Farla
Summary: Experimental.


This is a weird little thing. It's not complete, because I might come back and write more, but neither is it really a chaptered story with a beginning and end. It's just a different look at things. Currently edited in service of a point and out of morbid curiosity.

* * *

I wake up in a room.

I'm not sure if "wake up" is the right phase for it, as I'm not in bed. I'm standing in the middle of a room. I'm staring at a wall. The floor appears wooden. I turn. In front of me is a purplish box. Looking closer, I see it says "Gamecube" on it. I don't remember if I was playing it before. I don't remember if I've ever seen this room before. I don't remember if this is something that should worry me.

There is a computer in the left hand corner of the room. It's on a small table and there is a chair in front of it.

I step to the right experimentally. My legs move automatically beneath me, as if I've done it a million times before, and I stop somewhat jerkily at the thought. I walk several steps, amused by the novelty and unnerved by the sense it should not be novel. I turn, and find that, too, is easy, so I turn back and forth as I walk, going across the wooden floor in a tight, jerky circle.

I stop, satisfied that I've familiarized (refamiliarized?) myself with walking. I see stairs in the righthand corner of the room, leading down. More confidently, I walk to them and start down.

There is a woman sitting at a table. A TV is on to some program. I don't recognize either. I walk over to talk to her.

When I speak to her, she calls me by a name. She seems to know me, and sees nothing odd about me being in the house. She's my mother, I realize. The room I came from must be my room.

I could say this to her, but I don't remember if it's important. She tells me someone is looking for me. She calls them Professor Oak and doesn't say more, so I think he or she is someone I know. Knew. Know?

My mother tells me to go see him. I nod agreeably, not knowing what else to do. I should probably leave now, I think. I look around and for a moment or three I am not sure how I leave, exactly, and for a second I almost panic, but then my eyes find the door. I walk toward it, stepping over the mat and through.

Outside I discover I am in a small town. Flowers bob in the wind. There are some other people walking about.

I walk up to the nearest one, a fat man years older than me, probably in his mid-twenties, and say hello. He might be Professor Oak, or know who he is, but I'm not sure how to ask.

He greets me with a broad smile, and I wonder if he knows me. I ask why he is so happy instead. "It just struck me how amazing technology is. You probably don't even remember life before item storage. It's changed life so much."

I don't. "Item storage?" I ask.

For a second, he gives me an odd look, but it disappears as he says, "You know, the way we digitize items these days, so they can be moved through computers."

I don't know this either, but I can guess I should know it, so I don't ask anything else. I wonder if the computer I saw in the room can do this, and if there is anything inside it now. He doesn't say anything about wanting to see me, so I think he is not Professor Oak. I walk to the next person.

I'm not sure if I can go into the other houses. I was in one, but that was my home, I think, and I don't know if that would still be true if I enter other houses.

I realize, looking about, that I have another option besides the houses. There's a large building a little ways off, one that dwarfs the houses and carries a sense of importance somehow to my eyes.

I'm not sure what the building is (should I be?)

But, I think, perhaps that's where the Professor Oak I'm supposed to find is. More purposefully, I stride over, feeling pleased with my smooth, mastered walking ability. I reach the door without problem and enter.

I take in my surroundings. The floor here looks tiled, not wooden like in my room and house, and there are large bookshelves packed through with books. There's a computer like the one in my room by the back wall and other, less identifiable machinery everywhere else (or should I be able to identify it?) There's also someone else here, dressed in a white lab coat.

I hesitate. Is this the professor I'm supposed to meet, or have I made a mistake? It's awkward, trying to find someone when I'm not sure who they are, or even sure if I'm supposed to know in the first place. I walk over and they introduce themselves (so I don't know them, I gather, except in the process of finding that out, I do) as Professor Oak's aide. They tell me he isn't here, but seem to think it was a reasonable assumption to check. I'm not sure if I should be pleased by the fact my guess was correct, or frustrated that, apparently, no one knows where I'm supposed to look. I settle for nodding and thanking them before heading outside again to resume my search.

A bit further is an inlet of water, and beyond that is simply more water. There seems to be a wall of some sort blocking either side. For a moment I wonder if the professor I'm supposed to find is somewhere beyond there, and I walk up to the edge.

I stop, realizing that even at the edge I can't see any ground under the water, and that I can't swim.

It's an impediment, but I feel slightly pleased at the discovery all the same. I've found out something about myself.

But now what? Progress here is blocked.

Considering, I decide it's unlikely the Professor Oak who asked for me would be beyond there. He presumably knows me, or at least talked to my mother who knows me, and my mother would know that I can't swim, so I wouldn't be sent out and told to meet him if swimming was a prerequisite to meeting with him.

I nod to myself, pleased at working something out. Clearly, the water is not the direction to go in. Besides, I think, my mother said that Professor Oak was looking for me, and so he wouldn't be sitting around in some out of the way place expecting me to find him.

(I brush aside the question of why I seem to be looking for him anyway, or how he could be looking for me without finding me when I was standing in my room before. I brush aside the question of if I was standing in my room before. I brush aside the question of before.)

I look about again, with my back to the water, but see only the large building and the houses I'm not sure if I should investigate or not. I seem to have exhausted everything in the area, and the Professor Oak who's supposed to be looking for me is nowhere to be found. Now what? Surely he couldn't have left - I find I don't know the name of the place, although this, I feel, I should know. I try for a second, but it remains just out of reach, like something I'd read in a book a little while ago but hadn't been really paying attention to. What book? I don't remember that either. I'm just sure I know, or should know, or knew, if I'd just been paying a little more attention to remembering it in the first place.

After a few seconds of futile groping for the place's name, I return to the issue of finding the unfindable Professor Oak. I look back to my house again, wondering if I should try returning and asking if my mother knows where he is, though I think that if she knew, she would have told me in the first place.

(I brush aside the question of why she wouldn't know.)

Beyond, the strange walls of the town come in and the ground narrows to a path, covering in a thick, smothering bunch of green plants.

It doesn't look like a promising option, exactly - I don't see any sign of the professor there, and I think it may lead out of...the town, whatever it's called, where I think the professor wouldn't be. But it looks interesting, at least, and anyway, I'm not sure what else to do.

I walk up to it and walk into the plants, discovering that it comes up past my knees and rustles loudly at my step, so I start to take another.

"Wait!" someone shouts from behind me, and obediently I pause.

I turn to see a new person, dressed a bit similarly to the aide I saw earlier and with a long tuft of white hair atop his head that swings back and forth with each step. I wonder if it's another of Professor Oak's aides, and why he would need so many. What kind of a professor was he, anyway?

"What are you doing?!" the aide? demands upon reaching me. "Don't you realize that a wild pokemon could attack at any time when you're standing in tall grass!" Tall grass. That's what the plant is, I realize. It doesn't jog my memory, just as the rest hasn't, but I'm pleased to have added another bit to my understanding all the same.

"Come with me," orders the man, and I smile suddenly. This must be Professor Oak. I've managed to find him.

I know that, strictly, he found me, but I still feel I've accomplished something. And now I know who he is, and next, I'm sure, I'll discover why he's been looking for me. He starts away and I follow closely, almost right behind him. He turns into the building - Professor Oak's Lab, I think to myself, wanting to be sure I remember the few names for things I've managed to learn so far.

There's someone else inside, though I'm not quite sure if he was there before or if he's just arrived. He's a boy who looks like he's about my size (about my age?) He's the first person like that I've seen. I'm excited, but I feel a little uncertain, not sure if I'm supposed to know who he is already. The excitement fades as I see him scowl at me and demand to know why I'm there. I want to ask him if I've been unpleasant to him in the past, but can't quite figure out how to say something like that, so I'm just quiet and a little timid-feeling.

Professor Oak starts talking. Then he just keeps talking, and talking, and talking, and I'm trying to hang on every word for scraps of information while at the same time I'm feeling overwhelmed by it all and I feel sudden boredom and impatience at the effort and my head is spinning at all the sentences and _he's still talking_ and now I'm simply lost.

And...Pokemon. He's going to give me a pokemon. I see three...pokeballs. They're on the table, and I can pick any of them. The other boy is complaining, asking why he doesn't get to go first and for a moment I'm not even sure if I wouldn't rather that too, because I have no idea what to pick, but at the same time I don't know what I want to pick and what if he ended up taking it and - I realize there's been this simmering anticipation in me, for what will happen, and this is what it was leading me to, and I want that choice.

So I walk past the scowling boy - Gary, Gary-Maybe-Oak since this man is his grandfather and it depends on if it was a daughter or a son - to the table where the three red and white balls sit. I hesitate. Is the first one I touch mine? Is there some way of telling what it is, or am I, was the I I was a person who already knew, does everyone but me know these things? I don't know what to do, so after a second I reach out and grab. I'll find out one way or another.


End file.
